Epithelial cellsWIKIMEDIA COMMONS, JOHN SCHMIDT
Normal, healthy tissues regularly suppress the growth of tumors, preventing cancerous cells from proliferating and metastasizing. Yet how this process happens on a molecular level has largely remained a mystery. Now researchers have presented one model of how the local environment regulates and prevents the expansion of a single mutant cell into a tumor.
The finding, published this week in Nature, confirms past studies that show cancer is not simply a product of the buildup of DNA mutations in a cell, but rather is dependent on the architecture of a cell’s local environment.
“It’s definitely an interesting phenomena,” says Douglas Brash, who studies skin cancer at Yale University and was not involved in the research. “This paper affirms that cancer is not a cell autonomous ...
